Basics of Laser Physics ― For Students of Science and Engineering

This textbook provides an introductory presentation of all types of lasers. It contains a general description of the laser, a theoretical treatment and a characterization of its operation as it deals with gas, solid state, free-electron and semiconductor lasers. This expanded and updated second edition of the book presents a description of the dynamics of free-electron laser oscillation using a model introduced in the first edition that allows a reader to understand basic properties of a free-electron laser and makes the difference to “conventional” lasers. The discussions and the treatment of equations are presented in a way that a reader can immediately follow. The book addresses graduate and undergraduate students in science and engineering, featuring problems with solutions and over 400 illustrations.

Karl F. Renk received a diploma degree (1962) and a Ph.D. (1966) in physics from the Universitat Freiburg, Germany. He worked as a Senior Research Physicist at the University Reading, Great Britain (1966/67) and as Wissenschaftlicher Assistant at the Technische Universitat Munchen (1967-72). From 1972 to 2006, he was a Professor of Physics at the Universitat Regensburg, Germany, and since 2006, Professor Emeritus. He had visiting appointments at the Research Center Julich (1974), High-Field Magnet Laboratory of the Max-Planck Society, Grenoble (1976), University of California, Los Angeles (1980/81), Universite Scientific et Medicale de Grenoble (1985/86), and at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand (1992) as a New Zealand Erskine Fellow. Professor Renk is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, and the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Arzte. He developed the first Fabry-Perot interferometer for the far infrared (1962), later far infrared lasers and, finally, millimeter wave devices based on semiconductor superlattices and applied the techniques together with optical laser techniques to study dynamical processes of low-energy excitations in solids. The work is documented in about 250 scientific publications.